In a typical commercial film-processing operation for the development of photographic film received from amateur photographers, the orders are initially deposited by the individual customers at commercial locations designated as dealers, such as drug stores, supermarkets, or photographic equipment stores, and then shipped to the central processing laboratory where the undeveloped films are developed and prints made from the developed negatives. Typically, the undeveloped film is delivered to the processing laboratory in an envelope that contains information as to the identity of the individual customer as well as the identity of the dealer who sent it to the processing laboratory. After the film is separated from the envelope and developed, the film and the corresponding prints are placed in the original package and returned to the dealer for eventual pickup by the individual customer.
For reasons of efficiency, the film from a number of customers is processed in a single batch and, though the film and the envelopes are separated during the processing operation, they are maintained in their original batch sequence so that at the end of the developing process the prints can be correlated with the matching envelopes. In order to protect the developed materials, the prints and negatives are first placed in a wallet prior to being put in the original customer envelope.
Rather than using a generic form of wallet, most dealers desire personalization of the wallets to include identification of the dealer or other graphic or textual material by the dealer. This means that it is necessary that the wallets be correctly matched with the customer's negatives and prints as well as the order being matched to the envelope. In order to accomplish this task, machine-readable codes are employed on the envelope so that, as the undeveloped film is removed from the envelope, it can be coded and tracked through the developing process. The code also can be used to identify the dealer from which the order originated. According to one method, the machine code is initially read from the envelope by the developing laboratory as the film is first removed from the envelope. A custom wallet corresponding to the dealer identified by the code is then selected for the order and held with the order envelopes during the developing process. When the prints are finished, they are placed in the waiting preselected wallet along with the developed negatives. This method has a number of disadvantages.
First, it is not easily determinable at the beginning of processing how many finished prints will be contained in a given order. Consequently, after processing, when a customer order is found to contain a large quantity of prints, extra wallets will be required. Because the above-described method preselects the wallets before processing, the packaging process will have to be stopped and an extra wallet obtained or a generic wallet feeder will need to be used to accommodate the extra prints. Shutting down and restarting the assembly line take valuable time and detract from the production output rate of the lab, thus severely affecting profitability of the lab and causing customer dissatisfaction due to late delivery of orders. Also the use of generic wallets defeats the purpose of the method, since it does not contain the dealer-selected imprint. A further disadvantage is that any wallets that are damaged or found to be defective cannot be easily replaced without productivity loss. Another disadvantage of preselecting the wallet prior to production of the prints is that the wallet cannot be partially printed on demand because it is unknown exactly how many wallets will be needed unless prior estimates are made based on film length and order type. This method does not provide for easy custom selection of the graphics or text to be printed on the wallet during the packaging process, thus limiting the dealer's options.